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It’s proving extremely difficult to get moving this year. My season started very rough, had a few mid-season good moments and ended with a new PB in Lidingöloppet… quite good considering all the setbacks I experienced last year.

The preparation for nest year is none too stellar thus far. I’ve made the pain cave – something I had been planning to do for quite a few years. Unfortunately I have only used it once since I built it. I’m so far off track I think I need a solid plan to get some consistency back and then I can go back to my normal, less structured method.

This morning was my ninth run in eight days and the very first time I have felt in any way tired. The plan was to run home a longer route but that will now be binned. I’ll clock up today’s run and rest the legs until tomorrow. If I get the chance I will go swimming with the club tonight…

Having trained in a similar way for over ten years I have decided (or been forced?) to try something new. My training since my first child was born nearly seven years ago was based on the mantra: Make every minute count. As a time pressured athlete – every swim, bike or run had to have a purpose. The term and the physiological manifestation of ‘Base’ was no longer part of my athletic build up. Find time – train hard – repeat.

This concept allowed me to preform to a level that I could mostly be very proud of. However, I did miss my fair share of races because of this bare bones approach. I only ran on average two and a half times per week when preparing for a marathon, so any missed workout would put me way off track; Missing two was a frequently encountered disaster that put me forever in catch-up mode. Sickness usually caused a missed race because my fitness falls away so fast with this time of ‘cheap speed’ training. Which is what has happened this year:

November 2013, fell hard on the MTB fractured a couple of ribs badly. Six weeks off. Then, after three pretty painful days training: Influenza, for the third time in my life. 10 days before I could train and then it was very easy stuff. I then managed to put nine good weeks training together before spraining my big toe on a terrain run which led to a further 16 days off running. Stupidity then manifested and I decided I MUST run 20 km on my first run back since I was way behind on my prep for an upcoming half marathon, which led to a mild case of runners knee… which only manifests after about 6-8km or running.

So, what’s the change?
The change (not to be confused with challenge) is to Run Every Day for at least 25 minutes.
Just run. No plan. If I feel like running fast, I’ll do that. If I feel like doing hill intervals, I’ll do that. For now however, I’m just putting one foot in front of the other and doing it every day. There is no goal to reach 50, 100 or 200. Just do it and reset the counter every time I take a break. Until today, I had never ran more than three consecutive days in my life – I can’t actually find a three day run streak in my training log but I believe I must have done it sometime in the past. But here I am, after running five pain-free times in the past four days feeling pretty good.

My first Half Marathon since 2005 is 40 days away. Back then I ran a PB of 1:26:00 and, despite the fact that I have not managed to get very much training in so far, I wish to better that in 40 days time.

My base is ok. That’s where I have to start.
I have to build up distance and speed – did I actually type that?!
I’ll add some cruise intervals to my long runs if I feel I’m able to absorb the training, but basically, it’ll look something like this:

Week 6[31/3->6/4]:Long Run(17km), Shorter Faster Run, Long Run (20km)
Week 5[7/4->13/4]:Long Run(20km), Long Run (22km)
Week 4[14/4->20/4]:Track, Long Run (20km), Threshold Run
Week 3[21/4->13/27]:Track, Long Run (24km), Threshold Run
Week 2[28/4->4/5]:Track, Long Run (21km), Threshold Run
Week 1[5/5->10]:Track, Easy Run, Race

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I was on the bike on Saturday and did “The Lap”.
75km in almost exactly 2:30 – was pretty pleased with that considering that I have done pretty much nothing on the bike this year. Enjoyable ride.

I ran for an hour and felt absolutely no pain whatsoever in my ribs. To say I was delighted would be an understatement. The only niggling feeling I had was that I got tired at the end… a little more tired than I expected.

The fever that woke my up at 04:00 the next morning most likely explained a part of this decline in speed. That fever resulted in a flu and -so far- 9 days of zero training. If all goes well I’ll start back tomorrow with a row and then a run in the evening.

If I was over trained, I would expect HRV to be very low.
If I was sick, I would expect RHR to be higher.

Today I’m going to go with common sense – something is not right.
I got my second ‘flu of my life last year. I should have noted the onset – as far as I remember it was quick; very quick. Therefor I am hoping that this is not my third bout of ‘flu… time will tell.